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I have to be honest with you. I made a promise to you, my tribe, to be vulnerable and open, and so here we are. We are down and disheartened right now.

My husband and I have worked our way in to roles where we have more influence and impact on global issues and global missions than we have ever had in our careers. We now serve in circles and countries and situations where we can effect real change and empower people to make significant differences in the world and the Kingdom. We work directly with people who are changing the face of world poverty, human trafficking, water issues, human migration patterns, leadership development, and education around the globe. We coach and counsel and lead people who regularly sit in the offices of mayors and ambassadors and prime ministers and presidents. All of this is good. In fact, all of this is great! Real impact and real influence. Empowerment and development of grass roots programs, and people doing incredible things. But one fact remains…

Leadership is not sexy.​We aren’t doing “sexy missions” anymore. We are now leading and developing and caring for those people who do. We help to empower them and lift them up. We help to train them. We are the faceless mentors behind those incredibly great front-line workers.

We serve in a different way now. We are about Training, Mobilization, and Service. We aren’t digging the water well personally – but we counsel the guys who do. We aren’t living in a high security, closed access country teaching education programs and empowering local teachers and students – but we are the coaches for the ones who do that work. We aren’t sitting on dirt floors with mothers and babies in impoverished villages in the bush – but we mentor those who are. And we aren’t personally curing disease or bandaging the injured in medical clinics in the jungle or on war-torn borders – but we are helping heal the trauma that those people carry with them day in and day out.

There was a time when we did many of those things personally. We spent years doing work with poverty, with empowering women, and with hunger. We spent years helping with medical campaigns and serving in places that never see doctors or health care. We founded education programs in villages with little access to resources and high rates of illiteracy. We served in community development projects and harvested crops and milked goats and raised chickens and fed the hungry. And we planted churches and discipled new believers where before there had been none. We have vast experience on the front lines of ministry, mission, and humanitarian efforts. That experience and those years of service are exactly what lead us to be what we are today… mentors, leaders, trainers, coaches, and counselors for the next generation of cross-cultural workers that are taking up the torch and stepping in to serve.

In the corporate world, this is exactly how it should work! Younger workers spend years getting their feet wet, working their way through roles and job descriptions and career paths until one day they are really good at what they do, and they have the experience necessary to step up the ladder and train up the new recruits. They become leaders and mentors. Their earning power increases and their resumes build. They become team leaders or department heads or executives. They have arrived.

But it’s just not quite like that for cross-cultural workers who become leaders and take on leadership roles. At least it hasn’t been for us, nor for some of our peers. There hasn’t been any earning increase – we continue to be fully dependent on churches and partners and donations for funding the work. Now that 80% of our work and roles are related to leading others and mentoring, training, developing, and coaching, we are no longer seen as “real missionaries” by the general public. Our influence is greater, our responsibility is greater, our ability to impact effective change in real world issues is greater – yet we are losing funding every day because we aren’t “front line enough”. We don’t post photos of us curing diseases or healing the sick. We don’t have video of us wandering through dusty streets with native people groups. We don’t personally plant churches in war-torn areas. And we aren’t seen wearing traditional clothing or eating unknown foods. That used to be us, but not in this season. This season is a season of leadership and of training up and empowering and caring for our peers - other cross-cultural workers.

Leadership isn’t sexy. It doesn’t fit the traditional narrative for cross-cultural work. It doesn’t yield spectacular photos or near-death experiences or wild animal tales. But it’s necessary. It’s dirty in a different way. It’s front-line in a different way. It reaches the unreached and least-reached in a different way. And it’s what we are called to in this season. It’s the role we have risen to. It’s what we believe in.

I know we make a difference. I know we are holding others up when they don’t think they can keep going for one more day. I know that training matters, that development matters, that mentoring matters. It matters in the corporate world. It matters in the academic world. And it matters in the mission world. I know it matters.​Not all cross-cultural work is sexy. But that doesn’t make it less valuable. I know this calling still matters to God.

I know you are making a difference, too. a BIG one. For the thriving of individual workers and their families. For the demonstration of the gospel in healthy, godly people. Not to mention for the life of the organization. And if anyone needs official confirmation of that, you can send them to me. You know where to find me...even further behind 'the front lines' in an even less sexy role and place.

Reply

Ellen Bartlett

10/17/2018 10:28:06 pm

We love y’all and are praying for you. An old hymn has been playing on repeat in my head this week- ‘As the deer panted for the water so my soul panteth after you....’ it has kept me encouraged.

I pray you find your encouraging song and it plays on repeat in your heads encouraging your hearts - while you’re waiting on the Lord to move those mountains.

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Steve Buchele

10/18/2018 09:51:55 am

The theme song for our last six months was "You Can Do This Hard Thing" which you might find helpful in this season of not-so-sexy leadership.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRGnftH_g4I

Thanks for your transparency.

Peace,
Steve & Suzanne

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Laurie Drum

In my USA life, I was a teacher in Texas for 15 years. I was also a professional photographer, a soccer mom, a horsewoman, and the neighborhood hospitality queen. I did "Joanna Gaines farmhouse style" before Chip and JoJo were even a thing - we restored an 1884 Victorian farmhouse in small town Texas and did shiplap walls until I thought I'd go crazy. I taught at NASA, scuba dived with astronauts in training, and studied animals at Sea World for educational purposes. I've tried just about everything, because I have an insatiable need to know if I can do it! Never underestimate a Texas girl in cowboy boots!

​In 2006, my husband Billy and I became cross-cultural workers (CCWs) with TMS Global. For five years, we served in three rural Quechua Wanca villages in the Andes of Peru. And when I say rural, I mean RURAL - like no potty! I spent my days in Peru learning to live a Quechua lifestyle in a rustic adobe house - cooking Peruvian foods, sewing with Quechua women, raising my chickens and goats and pigs, and planting my gardens. Now I live my life in small town Spain, serving other cross-cultural workers via teaching and training and care, and helping displaced people to navigate their new reality in Europe.

I'm passionate about fostering personal growth, growth in community, and growth in The Kingdom. Walking alongside others and helping them to use their unique design, their gifts and strengths and maximize their abilities to fulfill their God-given purpose - that's what makes my heart sing!